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Recent efforts by the RIAA, MPAA and now TV studios to throttle,
take down and demonise "file sharing" are seen by plenty of us
around here as less of a Copyright battle and more of a fight to
retain both their business models and their top-down control over
customers and artists.

What we, as an internet community, need to do - and before the
cartels get the legal footing to reimage the 'net into a good
old fashioned Corporate to Customer "one way street" of content -
is take charge. The content needs to be freed, it needs to be
available to the masses but not via a torrent client scripted to
monitor an RSS feed but rather via any regular set-top box (STB). Most
importantly however, it needs to be legal, and it needs to
be somewhat better than YouTube quality.

And this is how...

Firstly we need a standard, open and easily implementable
set of formats for Audio, Video and Image content. They
may not all be patent-free (yet) but it might be a start if
these could be H.264,
OGG Vorbis and
PNG
respectively. The latter can also be used for Thumbnails in the feeds
which is the next step.

Secondly we need a network of interlinked channels of content, in
that a channel can contain any type of content, or links to other
channels, with descriptions and thumbnails. As the content will
be in standard formats these channels can be direct (or distributed)
download links, rather than forcing everyone to stream. There
already exists a channel syndication format, it's called
MRSS. Again, it might
not be perfect, but it's a start.

Thirdly this needs to be packaged together in one lump of a spec,
centrally coordinated in something akin to the
w3c but open to
all to implement. Now
anyone making a set-top box with a network connection will be able to
allow their
users to surf and watch content. STBs with hard disks will be able
to pre-fetch new content from bookmarked feeds whilst their owners
are on holiday. Geeks with file servers under the stairs will be
able to centrally store it and view or listen to it from any
device in the house. XBMC will be able to fold it into their
kernel, and there will be no geographical limits, no DRM and no
central control. Everyone will be able to link to everyone else's
feeds and content, creating their own Channels, and this is where
step four comes into play.

The fourth step sees the level of user-created content rise above
that of YouTube, yes fun and funky home videos will exist on this
new media-web but the ease with which anyone will be able to
mashup their own channels will act as a filter. If a large site
dedicated to SCI-FI hosts their own channel then it may be that
they pick up and "syndicate" the high-quality SCI-FI shows that
are out there. Imagine surfing your channels one night and finding
a new episode of Star Trek : Phase II
in 720i ready to roll. This cross-linking, big-site hosting and
blogging is what will allow the quality content to rise to the
attention of the masses without it being lost in the noise of
everything else. Just open your "This Week's New Sci-Fi" bookmark,
hit "Play All" and your Saturday night telly is sorted!

Fifthly - the legal standpoint - if these feeds are full of
LOST_S04E01_480p_LOL.avi links then we'll be missing the whole
point of the exercise - wresting control from big media into
our own hands. The above filtering will cure some of that: if
the big sites only link to legal content. The key is to start it
out hosting Creative Commons
content (without mandating it), so you'll be able to listen
to a couple of Nine Inch Nails albums and a whole bunch of stuff
you've never heard of. Of course this author relishes that idea
but the unwashed masses have their existing comfort zones, this
is something only pressure and time can overcome. One way may
ahead could be that home-brew "radio" stations will take off, playing
content
they themselves have sourced from the feeds as well as supporting
themselves via ads. There
will be no licensing fees to pay to the cartels because they won't
own any of the content. But once one or six "stations" become
popular the nervous users will have that comfort zone of being
told what's good!

Ultimately all online content could shift to this model, be it
my own dodgy homegrown breakbeat techno (3 CDs full) from the mid 90s
to
the next Blair Witch Project. And once that shift is in full
swing - and the whole thing is legal and available anywhere to
anyone with a connected PC, Laptop, Mobile, TV or Toaster -
then big media will have no choice but to compete on our terms.

They will not be able to force DRM, streaming or geographical
limits (though nothing would stop them from hosting different
editions on their.com and.co.uk servers, physical IP-blocking
aside) but they will still be able to exclusively host their
own content and even hold off switching on their download for
America's Got Sandwiches until exactly 8pm on Saturday night
if they like.

They will be able to embed adverts into their audio and video
and this will work in their favour - no one will bother torrenting
an ad free version if the legal and ad-embedded version is
already their on their TV at the click of a button. We can even
allow the MRSS-like feed spec to embed links to "Buy the plastic
disc edition exclusively from our online store" or "Visit our
merchandise store for concert tickets and exclusive must have hand
bags"
right alongside their feed if that will help them get on board.

At the moment we don't have a coordinated, easy to consume free media
distribution system online. There's content embedded in web
pages, streaming via flash applets, downloadable via http and ftp.
There are
Creative Commons searches and archives, there are torrents
and there are even plastic disc editions. There are also a
plethora of Miros, iPlayers and codecs galore.
But if instead of containing the access to the content in one
application for one or two OS's we make the publication of the content
an
open, accessible and Really Simple Syndication system for
Media we can make it so that Joe Sixpack doesn't have to
get off his sofa to watch it - or spend hundreds of dollars on
a HTPC instead of a few tens on a simple STB.

If we can do the above - and keep it legal - the cartels won't
be able to attack it and that's when the revolution will begin.